A Commentary on the Passing Scene by
Robert Paul Wolff
rwolff@afroam.umass.edu

Coming Soon:

The following books by Robert Paul Wolff are available on Amazon.com as e-books: KANT'S THEORY OF MENTAL ACTIVITY, THE AUTONOMY OF REASON, UNDERSTANDING MARX, UNDERSTANDING RAWLS, THE POVERTY OF LIBERALISM, A LIFE IN THE ACADEMY, MONEYBAGS MUST BE SO LUCKY, AN INTRODUCTION TO THE USE OF FORMAL METHODS IN POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY.Now Available: Volumes I, II, III, and IV of the Collected Published and Unpublished Papers.

NOW AVAILABLE ON YOUTUBE: LECTURES ON KANT'S CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON. To view the lectures, go to YouTube and search for "Robert Paul Wolff Kant." There they will be.

To contact me about organizing, email me at rpwolff750@gmail.com

Total Pageviews

Archive of Wolff Materials

Sunday, August 14, 2016

HARK WHAT LIGHT BY YONDER WINDOW BREAKS?

Eighty-six days until the election, and none too soon to
start talking about what comes next. It
is now clear that Clinton will win. The
only question is whether it will be a solid win – 5-7 points and 350 Electoral
Votes – or a blowout – ten plus points and close to 400 Electoral Votes. Which it is makes a big difference in down-ballot
races and control of House and Senate, but that is not possible to predict at
this point.

We know what we will get with Clinton. She will choose her economic team from Wall
Street [but probably not from the executive ranks of multi-national
corporations, an interesting fact, that.]
In a desperate effort to transform herself into a caricature of a hawk,
she has now reached out to the ninety-three year old Henry Kissinger for his
wisdom on foreign affairs. As the
immortal Judi Densch says in Philomena,
I didn’t see that coming.

Polls suggest that on November 9th there will be
a great many disillusioned twenty-somethings for whom this election has been a
choice between disaster and disgust.
Which, I believe, opens the way to the first truly progressive movement
in American politics in generations. It
is actually a great boon to such a movement that Clinton will be just fine on
all issues emanating from identity politics.
She will advance women’s rights, LGBT rights, Black Lives Matter, and
immigration reform. But she will not lay
a finger on Wall Street or attempt anything dramatic to reverse the
ever-greater economic inequality that now defines American society, which
leaves the field open for us.

If Bernie’s new initiative takes off, as I hope it will, we
can start to build a left-wing movement at the local, state, and congressional
levels where some concrete changes are possible. The recent spate of judicial rulings suggests
that Republican voter suppression efforts may be defeated, and one more Supreme
Court appointment will protect what the lower courts have started to do.

None of this will change Clinton’s basic domestic and
foreign policy orientation, but she is, before all else, ambitious, and as soon
as she is inaugurated, somewhere in the bowels of the White House a re-election
team will be pulled together. Steady
pressure from the left, combined with the utter disarray of a demoralized Republican
Party, gives those of us on the left a chance for some victories.

Now, the women’s marathon at the Olympics has logged another
ten miles. Let me go back to the TV set
and watch the finale.

What this means, of course, is an unraveling of the Iran deal, an attempt to take out Assad, more Israeli settlements and more taxpayer money for Israel, and god knows what kind of mess she makes with Turkey. You will see her throwing sanctions around recklessly, and our relationship with Russia is going to end up ever more fragile than it is now. She's running out of Middle Eastern countries to invade, but she'll find another one, I'm sure. The Saudi family and the Egyptian military are in good hands for another four years.

On the tails of a relatively restrained president, she is going to be a foreign policy disaster. Is this cynical or just being realistic about what passes for Realpolitik?

About Me

As I observed in one of my books, in politics I am an anarchist, in religion I am an atheist, and in economics I am a Marxist. I am also, rather more importantly, a husband, a father, a grandfather, and a violist.